


march 18, 2000

by softnow



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Drinking Games, F/M, drunk couch sex, season 7
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-09
Updated: 2018-09-09
Packaged: 2019-07-08 20:38:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15937835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softnow/pseuds/softnow
Summary: too much ale. a deck of cards. a tartan couch. mulder's hands.





	march 18, 2000

It has been years since she’s done this, played a game with rules she can’t quite learn, rules that change and liquefy and recondense into drink and drink and drink again.

She is two sheets to the wind and working on her third, and when she finishes a drink, Langly is already there, pressing an uncapped bottle into her hand. They drink foreign ale that tastes like raspberries and stings her throat. It is the last drink and the only drink she would ever expect from them, these ragtag enigmas, this band of merry men.

“Watch out for this one,” Frohike says when she slaps down a five and a queen, both hearts, whatever that means. “She’s gonna take you out.”

“She’s gonna drink you under the table.” Langly tips his thumb and his pinky finger to his lips then points at her.

She raises her bottle, swallows fruit and bubbles. She is winning in every way that matters—Mulder’s palm flat on her back, two fingers swishing under the top of her jeans. It has been two weeks now. Fourteen days. Three hundred and thirty-six hours. They’ve yet to tell the boys, but she suspects the boys already know. Have known for years, before there were things to know. Do not need his hand under her shirt to tell them.

“I hate this game.” Byers now, with a two and a six. 

Mulder whistles low, a pity whistle.

Frohike shakes his head. “Too bad.”

He leans over the coffee table with its spread of cards and cold pizza and pops the top of Byers’ bottle with the bottom of his own. Perfect execution. It fizzes, foams, a volcano provoked. Byers seals his mouth over it, cheeks strained. He is more casual than she’s ever seen him, tie lost, sleeves rolled to his elbows. She didn’t know he had forearms before tonight. She tells him as much. Langly laughs and Mulder scratches her back and she is drunk drunk drunk.

“Go, g-man,” Langly says when Byers has finished fellating his bottle, and Mulder performs the impressive task of shuffling his cards one-handed.

His other palm has been there, just left of her ouroboros, since they sat down on this sagging tartan couch four hours ago. Since he took off her blouse three hundred and thirty-six hours ago. Since she walked into his office seven-tenths of a decade ago.

He leans forward and tosses a jack and an eight, both clubs, onto the coffee table. “Bottoms up, boys. Three fingers.”

Byers groans, cradling his head as Langly slips him a fresh bottle. She wonders how long before he taps out. Before they all tap out. They aren’t young anymore, not really. No matter how much she feels it, with ale in her veins and Mulder warm and solid at her side.

“You too, princess,” Frohike says when she doesn’t move.

“Oh.” She flushes, alcohol and embarrassment at being the worst one here, the only one who can’t seem to grasp the rules.

But maybe there are no rules, she decides. Maybe this is all an elaborate game of make believe. Simon Says. Follow the Leader. Mulder’s hand dips lower. She has followed does follow will follow him anywhere.

She measures three fingers on the neck of her bottle and knocks it back. She’s lost count of how many times she’s done this tonight. Langly makes a face like appreciation. She doesn’t know the rules, but she is a sailor’s daughter, is a woman with a gun. She downs a fourth just because she can.

Mulder’s hand travels west, curls around her hip to tug her close. He buries his nose in her hair.

“You’re the hottest thing they’ve ever seen.” His voice is low and smooth and just for her. “You’re the hottest thing I’ve ever seen.”

She blushes again and it has nothing to do with the alcohol.

“I can’t,” Byers groans. 

She turns back to the game to see a pair of kings—both diamonds, both Langly’s—topping the pile.

“Ah, come on.” Langly uncaps two new bottles, slides them to his fellow Gunmen.

He is the peer pressure my mother warned me about, Scully thinks with a giggle. Her laughter dies in her throat when Mulder’s hand glides up, up, up to flirt with her bra clasp.

“I think the man has a point,” he says, sounding for all the world like he isn’t currently maneuvering one little metal hook out of its corresponding eye. “Let’s save some liver for tomorrow, hey?”

Langly and Frohike grumble, but if they are the merry men, he is their Robin Hood, and in this, they will not argue.

Byers slinks off to find a bed or a toilet or maybe a hole to lie in while the rest of them do a rudimentary cleaning—sweeping empties into a trash bag, stuffing cards backwards-forwards-upside-down into the box. Scully wobbles on her feet when she bends to pick up an errant ace, and Mulder steadies her with a hand on her hip.

She tilts up to say thank you and is struck silent by the warmth in his eyes, the fullness of his mouth. He is so very beautiful and she is so very drunk and if she is not kissing him in the next thirty minutes, she will absolutely sob.

“A cab,” she manages. “We should—”

“Yeah,” he agrees. He is looking at her lips. She knows how he feels.

“Don’t be stupid. Take the couch,” Frohike says. Then, with a leer and a wink: “It’s a pullout.”

Mulder flashes his middle finger, but he’s grinning, and for the first time, Scully sees him at nineteen, boyish and obscene in some English pub, lighter by degrees than he would be later, but perhaps not as light as he is right now. She hopes he had friends half this good to laugh with. She hopes he had someone to put his arm around. She hopes he didn’t like this someone half as much as he likes her.

They take the couch but they don’t pull it out. It’s better like this, stacked together on the same cushions under one blanket, his tongue in her mouth and her hands in his t-shirt. He is berry-sweet and addicting as he licks her hard palate and groans against her lips, and she is dizzy dizzy dizzy.

“Scully, god.” He sucks at her neck and palms her breasts. “Do you know how much I want you right now?”

She knows. She can feel him, thick and waiting between her thighs. And she wants—she _wants_ —but—

“You’re drunk,” she groans.

He bites her earlobe and shoves her shirt up over her bra, reaches around to undo the last hook. “Mm, so’re you. Didn’t mind last weekend.”

Last weekend: too much red wine and her bouncing in his lap, grinding, riding, fucking the life out of him while he howled her name. She hadn’t minded a bit. But—

“The guys,” she gasps. “They could… Oh, fuck.”

He sucks her nipple harder, nipping it with his teeth before releasing it. His eyes lock with hers and he kisses the wet, ruddy peak so gently she could cry.

“You wanna stop? Tell me to stop, Scully. I’ll stop.”

She should. She should tell him. It’s four letters. Not hard. But god, she’s aching for him, has been since he slipped his warm, heavy hand up under her shirt, has been for two weeks, has been for seven years.

“Don’t,” she says, gripping his shoulders, dragging him closer. “Don’t stop. Please, god, don’t stop.”

He growls and smashes his mouth to hers, stealing her breath and giving it back. They remove what’s necessary, and then he’s there, pulsing and ready. She cants her hips and he slides in and they share the same moan as he stretches her full.

She hasn’t done this since college, fucked drunkenly on someone else’s couch, but she’s sure it was never so good, sure no one ever gave it to her quite like this—slow to minimize noise, hard and deep to make up for it. Her toes curl against his calves and she sinks her teeth into his bicep and when he tells her to come for him, come so hard for him, come all over him, with his hand between their bodies and his cock nudging the end of her, she does. And does and does and does, and he does too, and they shake together afterwards, lightheaded and inching towards sober.

When they can breathe again, he plants a sloppy kiss on her mouth and they right their clothes and he rolls her on top of him to lie on his chest.

She spots the deck of cards still on the table through half-mast eyes and can’t resist asking, “Mulder? Who won tonight?”

His arms are sleep-heavy and warm on her back as he squeezes her closer, and he sounds perfectly content when he nuzzles her hair and says, “I did, Scully. I did.”

You’re wrong, she thinks as one of his hands slides beneath her shirt to rest just left of her tattoo. You are so very wrong.


End file.
